A couple years ago my hubby lost his very well paying job. He went from a production job making 13$ an hour to a delivery job making 5.15$ an hr. And our debts which were already high seemed to triple. A friend of mine talked me into using one of those credit counseling agencies. Worst thing I ever let a man talk me into. Lost payments, late payment and the banks didn’t give a flying whoop- they wanted ALL their money NOW.
Well, with patience and a good screaming fit into the phone and the money from my Dad’s estate we have managed to pay off almost all the creditors. YES!!!
Anyway to get to the evil: yesterday I get my statement from the credit counseling agency and tucked into it is an application FOR A FUCKIN CREDIT CARD! HELLO! Didn’t I just get these all paid off!
So after years of sending me their condescending paperwork purporting to teach me “how to use my money more wisely” (yes, I am sure checking books out of the library would be a good idea IF my library carried what I wanted to read!) they are angling to have me hooked back into the same trap we were in before!
Apparently, if we all got out of debt they would all be unemployed! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL!
Silly thing, it’s the “get back on your feet” credit card! Very much like the “get back in the swing of things” drink for recently-sober alcoholics, and tangentially related to the “get back into the groove” bag of painkillers for the recovered drug addict. Makes perfect sense to me…
Seriously, I’ve been there, got the pictures to prove it. My wife and I are just starting to pull ourselves out of a pretty big hole. We had a brief experience with a Credit Counselor, but got out of it before it got too bad… it was bad enough early on. Feels good to be getting out of it ourselves.
Congratulations on making it. These days, that alone is a pretty impressive achievement.
One credit card with a car repair-ish limit is pretty nice to have. Now with debit terminals everywhere, less so. I agree that it seems ironic. But credit isn’t like heroin, exactly.
Not using credit is sound financial advice, unless you need to. I’ve seen credit hells made out of necessity. Sometimes though, it’s shopping on TV. I can’t imagine not having credit for things like four tires and a brake job. Trip to Vegas – bad. Well, unless you hit the BIG ONE! :dubious:
Most of the non-profit credit counseling agencies are funded by the creditors. I don’t blame them; they want their money after all, and it makes sense for them to work together to get people on a payment plan. At least that way, each one is going to get something.
That said, it’s certainly in their interest to send you an app once your debt has been reduced. It is pretty fucking obnoxious, though.
I must agree with Krisfer. Not sure I’d call it WRONG wrong, but certainly not quite kosher.
I’m currently finishing up my teacher certification. Until I do so, I can’t get paid for teaching. Unless I quit school, that is. Then I can legally teach, AND get paid for it.
But since I’m in school AND teaching, I get to pay for the privelige of doing a teacher’s job for free.
And I can’t get financial aid, for reasons no one really wants me to go into.
And I’m so far in hock, I can’t even afford to pay ATTENTION.
…but because I’m back in college, and about to complete a program, I’m on the hit list for every stinkin’ credit card and loan shark outfit there is. Everyone and their dog is trying to get me to sign my soul away in exchange for E-Z credit terms and ALMOST NO INTEREST (for the first six months, anyway…)
It goes on the record as a ‘slow pay’. That is much less of black mark than a bankruptcy, but it does stay on you credit record for (I think) 5 years.
I have a far different experience with credit counseling. They helped me clear better than $26,000 in credit card debt. I paid it off in less than 4 years.
Yes, these agencies are mostly funded by the creditors. But it makes good sense for them. This way, they get their money and the consumer gets out of a hole and can start spending again. It’s win-win.
CCSof LA talked to all my creditors and made the arrangments for payment. Several of the creditors (Chase and CitiBank) lowered their interest rate considerably on the debt, and 2 creditors waived the interest entirely. That certainly helped a lot.
IMO, credit cousleing is a great deal. I’m sorry you were the victim of screw-up by your agency, but I think you are the unfortunate exception to the rule.
Did a Chapter 7 a year ago. Discharged $80k+ in a matter of minutes. Best financial decision of my life.
friedo hit it right on the head, and I’ll add to it. The banks don’t care if you sink or swim. They’ll get their money by
a) getting you to pay off the principle–giving you the credit report equivalent of a cheap grope
b) getting you to pay a bunch of it before and in the process of a Chapter 13 BK–giving you the credit report equivalent of a bad one night stand
c) getting a tax break from writing off the bad debt when you file CH 7, colluding with one another to fix it so you will continue to pay usurous rates well into the future–giving you the credit report equivalent of a full blown tie-'em up and tickle 'em till they pee the bed.
It all became easier to deal with once I realized that the goal of the card banks is to make it easy to get into debt to the point that you start to rely on them for day to day expenses–because those expenses would normally have been paid with the cash you now give to them. Once you’re in the snowball, you are screwed unless your income or your needs change significantly. So my credit is hosed. What do I need it for? If I halt all spending, I can replace my suddenly dead car with another within a couple paychecks; I didn’t lose the house and can make that payment easily enough. What else do I need good credit for? Cash still works
I wouldn’t do this, but my BK attorney told me that she has clients that come back to her every 7 years (I think you have to wait 6 years between Chapter 7s)–BK is part of their long-term financial plans: they “gather” $100k+ in goods/services which the CC companies advance to them, then kill the debt. viola! it’s the equivalent of getting an extra $15k per year retroactively.
I have a cousin who does the bankruptcy thing about every 7 yrs. She makes tons of money and then starts over with a clean slate as often as the law will allow.
And I agree with you about the credit thing. It is the holy idol of the new millenium. Banks talk about " perfect credit" like is some kind of sanctifying condition like kosher.( Not to diss Jews or being kosher just thats the only example I can think of at the moment.) I thought about it and talked to my Mom before going to the credit counceling agency and decided that for me it was more important to get my family out of debt than worry about my credit. Not that its helped my credit with all those lost payments. sigh Can’t win for losing. I have got to get it together and write the bank about that!
Re “evil” credit card issuers, please refresh my memory about who agreed to the conditions under which the cards were issued, and then kept piling on credit card debt until you were under water when crisis struck. Assuming you didn’t sign the credit card apps with a crayon, what precisely was your expectation of what they would do to collect the money you owed them so they could stay in business?
astro, you’re not off base, but you are overlooking the possibility that life happens. Income can change unexpectedly, or income projections from a new business may not come to fruition on time or at all (I experienced both within the span of a year and found myself seriously ‘on the hook’). This is not always the case, of course. Some foax fill out the app and say, “Sukkah!” when the get the card.
The only beef I have with The Evil Ones is that they have at their disposal vast amounts of statistical data which they can use to calculate the debtor’s ability to pay (Debt/Income for one) and they choose not to use that information to protect the consumer from himself, nor to protect themselves from the consumer. And the reason they do not use the information is because it is more cost-effective to charge high interest rates and late fees (free money to the bank) and to write off the principle as bad debt when the consumer crashes. The Bank benefits, the merchants benefit, the consumer suffers.
To a limited degree your attitude has merit ala: “Don’t bite off more than you can chew.” But your average Joe doesn’t have the background to understand, nor the time to learn the ‘common sense’ concepts of financial planning–that’s why there are people who get paid to do financial planning, tax prep, life insurance and securities trading. What you do with your paycheck is ultimately your responsibility, true, but for many people it takes all their mental efforts to get to work, do their special job, get home and have a life. They don’t even suspect a train exists until they are walking in the dark tunnel and see a light coming at them. I’m just glad The Evil Ones don’t have Guido come over & break legs anymore.
And then you have people like **Krisfer’s ** cousin…who DO know how to (legally) beat The Evil Ones at their own (legal) game and are willing to do it.
My family is currently dealing with CCCS of St. Louis, and we have been happy with them. There are credit counseling agencies and credit counseling agencies - when it became apparent that we needed to do SOMETHING I did my research. This is a non-profit that’s been in business for over thirty years, and is just about the only business of its type that the State Attorney General Jay Nixon (who is big on fraud issues) has anything good to say about.
Apparently, there are a lot of unscrupulous debt counseling agencies out there who are in the business just to make a quick buck.
CCCS sat us down and made us figure out our income and work out a budget. We had to contact the various credit card agencies and cancel the cards ourselves. We were told ‘we’ll help you, but you must take care of this yourselves, or you’ll never understand how you got there and how you’re getting out’. And they also made it very clear to us that never having any credit cards ever again would probably be a good idea. They also made it clear that as an RN I needed more steady employment than what I had; as a result, I went out and got a great job doing disease management that I really love.
All this has been exactly what we needed. We’re paying everything off, we’re actually saving money for the first time in years, and things are looking up. They helped us see clearly what was going wrong.
There are certainly bad agencies out there, and it takes some work to figure out which ones are the ones worth using. And the approach isn’t suitable for everyone.
My wife went through CCCS of Boca Raton, FL recently (we completed the program about a year ago) and other than a couple really minor issues it was definately a positive experience. The minor issues also may or may not be their fault (we were sending money to the credit cards on top of paying the minimum to the counseling agency to try and pay down the debt quicker, and they kept having accounting issues and calling us because of it) so I can’t really say anything bad about them, and in fact recommended them to multiple freinds in similar situations.
Just wanted to mention it as not all the companies or the experiences are bad.
My wife went through CCCS of Boca Raton, FL recently (we completed the program about a year ago) and other than a couple really minor issues it was definately a positive experience. The minor issues also may or may not be their fault (we were sending money to the credit cards on top of paying the minimum to the counseling agency to try and pay down the debt quicker, and they kept having accounting issues and calling us because of it) so I can’t really say anything bad about them, and in fact recommended them to multiple freinds in similar situations.
Just wanted to mention it as not all the companies or the experiences are bad.
